Procne is the older daughter of the king of Athens. She is sitting in the
shade of the castle wall with her younger sister. It’s a hot day in summer. The
sky is blue as a bruise. They have their skirts hitched up over their knees
because there is nobody there to see them. The grass is itchy beneath their
bare legs.
Procne points up.
“Listen,” she says. “Can you hear it?”
But her sister isn’t listening. “I’m bored. Why can’t we go to school?”
“You know why. Because we’re girls. Listen, there it is again.”
“If we went to school we could learn how to read.”
“It’s a skylark. Look at it flying! It’s so high up!”
“If we learned how to read, we could write to each other when you move
away and get married.”
“You’ll move away and get married too.”
“Not for years. Anyway, I don’t want to. Why do I have to?”
“You know why.”
They both stare up at the sky.
“I wish we were birds,” says her sister. “I wish we could fly away and never
come back. I want to leave everything behind, forget it all and be free,
together with you. Why can’t we?”
“I don’t know.”

It’s Procne’s wedding day. Her father is giving her away to a warrior king
who has helped Athens win a war. She is standing with her sister outside the
temple. Inside, her new husband is waiting for her, but she is too scared to
look, to see what kind of man he is. But her sister is peeking through a crack
in the door.
“He’s tall. That’s good.”
Procne’s mouth is too dry to speak. “Mmm-hmm.”
“And he’s got wild hair, and eyes like a hawk.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I think you’re going to fall madly in love with him and give him lots of
sons.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But you’re not allowed to love him more than you love me.”
She looks back at Procne.
“That would be impossible.”
Her sister helps her to put on her wedding veil. They wonder if they will
ever see each other again.
“Go. And be happy.”

It’s the wedding night. Procne is wearing a silk nightgown that covers her
from her chin to her toes. Her heart beats so hard she is surprised she can’t
see it through the nightgown.
Her new husband sits on the bed, completely naked. She keeps looking at
him, and away from him, and back at him again.
He reaches out a hand towards her. At that exact moment an owl hoots on
the roof.
“That’s bad luck,” says Procne.
Her husband laughs. He reaches out again.
“What’s it like to kill somebody?” says Procne.
Her husband stops. He thinks about it.
“In the heat of battle,” he says, “it is actually very easy to kill somebody. It’s
remembering it afterwards that is hard.”
Now she is the one who reaches out to him.

Six full moons have passed.
Procne sits at the window of her new home, the sun on her face. She looks
out to sea. Miles and miles of sea between her and her sister. She cradles her
belly with her hand. Her baby has started to move. She wishes she could tell
her sister…
Procne and her husband stand on the balcony of the palace. The roars of
the crowd are deafening.
Her husband holds the boy up so that they can see. The roars get louder.
He hands the baby to her, and she feels a surge of love more powerful
than anything she has ever known…
It’s the middle of the night. Procne is changing her baby’s nappy. He will
not stop crying. She has shit on her sleeve and he has just pissed all down the
front of her nightdress. She had said that she wanted to do everything herself,
that she didn’t want her son to be raised by servants. Maybe she didn’t mean
everything. She and her sister grew up without a mother. She’d tried to be like
a mother to her sister, but she realises now that she had no idea what that
meant…
Procne’s son is learning to crawl. He only knows how to go backwards. He
keeps pushing himself back into corners and getting stuck. Procne laughs and
laughs and turns around to share it with somebody, but there’s nobody else
there…

Procne’s husband and her son are playing together. They are throwing
stones at a sparrow’s nest to try to knock the eggs down. Her husband looks
so young. Almost like a little boy himself. They two of them look so much like
each other, sometimes she thinks there is nothing of herself in the boy at all.
She wishes she could give her son a little brother, she tries and she tries, but
nothing happens…
Procne’s husband is teaching their son to ride a pony. He falls off and he
cries. Procne runs to pick him up, but her husband says, “No. He is going to
be king one day. He has to learn.” Her son stands, turns away from her and
climbs back on the pony. He is only five years old…
Procne’s son is at his schoolwork. Holding a pencil in his fat paw, he
makes clumsy shapes on the page. “Help me, Mummy,” he says.
“I can’t,” says Procne.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t read.”
He starts to laugh. “You’re stupid.”
Procne looks out of the window, out to sea. Miles and miles of sea between
her and her sister.
“Be a good boy and wait here,” she says.
She goes downstairs to her husband’s study.
“I miss my sister,” she says. “I miss her so much. I need to see her. Please
go and fetch her so that she can visit me here. I beg you.”
“You beg me?” says her husband. “Then beg. On your knees.”

Procne holds her son up so that he can see out of the window. Out to sea,
where her husband should be on his way home with her sister.
“Your aunt will be here very soon,” she says. “You are going to love her.
She’s the cleverest person I know. The strongest. The bravest.”
“Except for Daddy,” says her son.
“Except for Daddy. Of course.”
It has been two months. They should have been back weeks ago.
She points to the sky. “Listen,” she says. “Can you hear that? It’s a skylark.
Look! They fly so high.”

Her son squirms in her arms. He wants to get down.

She is in bed when she hears the horses. She is up and running before
she even realises that she is awake. She runs outside in her nightgown, in
front of all the servants, in front of everyone. She scans the faces, looking for
the ones she loves.
She finds her husband.
He can’t look her in the eye. Nobody can look her in the eye.
“There was a storm,” he says. “The sea took your sister. Her body was
never found.”
So there is no body to bury but she builds a tomb anyway. She sits inside
it, alone. It is low stone chamber lit by a single candle. There are statues at
each corner, and a slab in the middle where her sister should lie.
Her son crawls in after her.
“Are you sad, Mummy?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Because your sister is dead?”
“Yes.”
Her son climbs into her lap and puts his arms around her.

Gifts arrive at the palace. They are supposed to make her feel better. They
don’t. Food rots. Flowers die.
One day, an old woman comes with a tapestry that she says has been sent
by a prisoner who is being held in a fortress in the woods. The tapestry is tied
tightly shut. Procne breaks a nail on the string.
Finally she manages to unroll it.

It’s beautiful. It is woven with red and white thread. It shows a series of
images that tell a story.
The first image: her husband kneeling at the feet of her father. She
recognises her father’s kind smile. Her husband’s wild hair. Behind the throne,
her sister. The face she hasn’t seen in all these years.
Then her sister and Procne’s husband are on a boat. Her sister looks out to
sea, and her husband looks at her sister.
Then her husband has her sister by the wrist. He is dragging her through a
forest to a fort.
Then her sister is on a bed. She is screaming and crying. Procne’s
husband is between her legs.
Then her sister stands, naked, pointing at Procne’s husband and shouting.
Procne’s husband draws his sword. He holds her sister’s tongue in his
hand and cuts it off at the root.
Her empty mouth bleeds. The tongue twitches at her feet.
He takes more and more obscene pleasures from her, forcing her into
contorted positions.
At last her broken body is left alone on the ground.
The final image is of Procne’s sister, weaving the very tapestry that she
now holds.
“What’s that?” says her husband. Procne looks up.
He is standing in the doorway.
“Just folk art,” she says, crumpling the tapestry in her hands.

It is the festival of Bacchus. The streets are full of women, drinking and
dancing and letting out everything that for the rest of the year they must keep
locked up inside them. Procne spins and whirls, drunk on fury and grief.
When they reach the woods, Procne separates herself from the rest.
The fort is not heavily guarded. Procne slips easily inside.
Her sister lies in the corner of her cell. Procne picks her up and carries her
back to the palace.

Procne’s sister sits huddled in her own tomb. Procne paces up and down.
“I’ll gouge out his eyes. Nail his tongue to the wall and saw through it with a
rusty knife. Rip off his testicles. Set the palace on fire and let him burn like an
insect inside it.”
“Mummy?”
Her son.
He really does look so much like his father.
She kneels and opens up her arms. He comes to her.
“Don’t be scared,” she says.
But she is the one who is scared. She is scared of herself.

The banqueting hall is almost empty. Procne has sent everyone away.
There are no servants tonight, no guards. It is quiet. Only her husband is
there, seated on his throne.
She carries in a huge tray laden with meat. She feeds it to him, piece by
piece, with her trembling fingers straight into his hot wet mouth.
She remembers how much she used to love this man.

“This is delicious,” he says. “Only one thing is missing. Where is my son? I
want to share the meal with him.”
“He’s here,” says Procne.
“Where?”
“He couldn’t be closer to you,” says Procne. “He is inside you.”
She watches him understand.
He starts to choke.
He falls to his hands and knees, gagging and retching. He tears at his belly
as if he could rip his way in, as if he could give birth to his son again.
He only manages to say one word: “Why?”
“Why?” says Procne. “Why?”
The door to the kitchen opens, and her sister comes in, holding out her
hand. On her palm is the tongue of Procne’s son.
Procne’s husband freezes.
Then he draws his sword.
Procne is ready to die. Inside she is already dead. But her sister grabs her
hand and starts to run.
They run and they run, out of the palace and into the garden, faster and
faster, so fast that it feels like flying…
And then they are flying.
 
The husband becomes a hoopoe, because a hoopoe’s beak is long and
sharp like a sword. And Procne, she becomes a swallow, because they have
a patch of red on their throat, like blood. And the sister flies away into the
woods. She gets her voice back. She becomes a nightingale. And every night,
when darkness falls, she sings.

Is that enough, that voice, singing in the dark...